MA gun laws poster

Does anyone know how to find out when this law (requiring the printing of the poster) was passed, and who sponsored it and why? If the intent was to put all gun laws in one place, it is missing out on MANY.
 
I suspect that it was in the Acts of 1998 C. 180, aka Gun Control Act of 1998.

And there are gun laws in C. 131, C. 269, etc. as I go over these in my Mass Gun Law Seminar.
 
"The licensing authority may not prescribe any other condition for the issuance of a firearm identification card and shall, within 40 days from the date of application, either approve the application and issue the license or deny the application..." - Two for one sale in that one.

Did this language get cleared up in the latest bill?
 
Do you have the cite?
Thanks!
Not at hand. But if you take a look at the section on licensing, you'll see it has a super complicated clause structure that goes on about "paragraph 1 in effect until date... paragraph 2 takes effect on date" or something like that. I think it's C140 S121. But I'm being lazy tonight.
 
Not at hand. But if you take a look at the section on licensing, you'll see it has a super complicated clause structure that goes on about "paragraph 1 in effect until date... paragraph 2 takes effect on date" or something like that. I think it's C140 S121. But I'm being lazy tonight.
Thanks for trying at least. I can't make head nor tails of any of it. There is no order or structure to speak of really. Even the poster, which is supposed to be very clearly laid out, has "addendums", which were never mentioned anywhere in the law which created the poster.
 
Thanks for trying at least. I can't make head nor tails of any of it. There is no order or structure to speak of really. Even the poster, which is supposed to be very clearly laid out, has "addendums", which were never mentioned anywhere in the law which created the poster.
We all agree it's often poorly written, which is in part a function of our precedential system and the simple reality that legislators are rarely subject matter experts on the things about which they're charged with writing laws. This leads to the two edges of the administrative state: we can put experts in charge of creating regulations that have the force of law, but then unelected bureaucrats are making "laws." We can shout from the rooftops "that government is best which governs least" but our neighbors are demonstrably uninterested.

But I digress. If you break it down by clause, it gets easier. You might even consider color coding or other studying aids to help grok how it breaks up. You can even rearrange the text (based on the instructions) to make the before and after versions as separate constructions.

At the end of the day, this is why we hire folks like @nstassel, @eboos, and @RKG - who have dedicated significant time, over much of their lives, to understanding it. It's also why we thank folks like @Len-2A Training and @JGreen who work so hard to make them understandable to layfolk. Standing on the shoulders of these giants helps people like me, @pastera, and @Picton come up to speed, read the primary sources, and try to make heads and talks of it.
 
Just wanted to reiterate that these posters are in the Statehouse Bookstore at no cost to residents. This is a good thing to bring with you when you go to visit your legislator. You can then tell them it is a fraction of the actual gun laws, and remind them that most of them are useless in stopping actual crimes.
 
It looks like you're still missing a bunch.

Go to google and type in

"site: https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/firearm "

That will return everything from the malegislature site with the word "firearm" in it.

If you use a small enough font, you may be able to fit it all on a billboard.

BTW, I tried sending you a pm, but your inbox is full.
I redid the search to freshen it up.



I put together a list of all the gun laws I could find on the books in Massachusetts and put them here

http://www.attorneyfoley.com/uploads/Massachusetts_Gun_Laws_2013.pdf

I had planned to print them out and distribute them at the hearing scheduled in Worcester, but that became unwieldy. The PDF file is 205 pages, and I don't have that much toner.

I'm considering self-publishing this on lulu.com or some other self-publishing site.

I would like to print copies and send one to each of the 200 Massachusetts legislators with a note saying "Before you consider passing more gun legislation, please familiarize yourself with the laws already on the books". Unfortunately, I don't have the coin for that, so I'll just let people download and print themselves.
This link still works. Ten years old, but it was a start.
 
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